Distributors object to AMD-Intel plans

MAJOR DISTRIBUTORS named in the antitrust case AMD has filed against Intel said they objected to the terms of an agreement the chip firms had made on a proposed protection order.

ASI, Avnet, Ingram, Synnex and Tech Data filed their objections collectively at the end of last week and produced a series of arguments against the protection order.

They said that as disties they occupy the "middle" position in the CPU market from AMD and Intel, then reselling and distributing these products. Distributors are not parties to any of the different litigations "and have no direct involvement or interest in them".

Each had received a subpoena from AMD and been told Intel may serve its own set of subpoenas. These demand a lot of proprietary and confidential documents including contracts, buying and pricing details. Members of the general public wouldn't have access to most such documents. Plus no distributor would have access to the other distributors' data. They want to minimise the burden of broad sweeping subpoenas and protect confidentiality of such documents. Instead, the distributors have produced a "black lined" protective order they would like the court to take account of.

In some ways you can understand the distributors' objections. They have to deal with both AMD and Intel - vendors are not traditionally the best friends of distributors, and they don't want their secrets shared with the world+dog or with each other. µ

See Also
INQ coverage of the AMD-Intel case